Kathleen Noyes
kathleen@kathleennoyes.com
Artist Statement
I paint with acrylics because they dry quickly, allowing a spontaneous, uninterrupted painting experience, achieving a sensuous, primitive and sculptural surface. Assembling recycled torn or cut elements of my old drawings and paintings to create collages and mixed media pieces, and my use of modeling paste gives my work added dimensional shape, texture, depth, and vitality. Scraping and sanding reveals the underlying layers much like an archeological dig uncovers the past, creating mystery and complexity. Each work is an integrated whole composed of pieces, just as individuals are made up of physical and emotional fragments. My figures are expressive rather than representational, products of my imagination and born of random marks. What keeps me curious, dedicated and obsessed in my painting is encountering the unforeseen, revealing unplanned images, worlds and stories of unique figures. While their identities are dissociated from actual persons, I strive to capture a rich aliveness and dramatic charge. I want to challenge viewers to empathize with these people, to see their humanity, as well as their individuality. Their enigmatic faces, and often defiant but vulnerable gaze, arouse the viewer to see and KNOW them intimately. I am exploring the concept of people’s need for finding a “home”; an individual identity within the collective in a world with a disintegrating sense of belonging. I am wondering about the place of race, culture, sexuality, religion, worldview, citizenship, ideology in our lifetime. I’m questioning whether this fractured world is shareable at this time. I present figures of indeterminate sexuality, ambiguous culture, religion, and race who in their essence belong to all of woman/mankind. I want to show that no matter how these figures identify, they possess an overarching humanity.